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Oh, Jack Eichel, the places youll go!

Oh, Jack Eichel, the places youll go!

oh-jack-eichel-the-places-youll-go

Jack Eichel moves around the ice like a lava lamp. The Boston University freshman makes hockey -- dangerous Cheap David Krejci Youth Jersey and difficult -- look quite safe and easy within his slippery surface encased in glass. It's been this way since his parents, Bob and Anne, policed his fledgling mini-stick hockey career at age 3 in North Chelmsford, Massachusetts, northwest of Boston. Little Jack would be instructed to go earn whatever he would get. When you grow up not rich and not poor, you are not all that far off from either, but you are closer to poor. This state of mind and currency creates patience mixed with an undercurrent of urgency. Stir that together and you have a kid with a chance to go places. Jack Eichel is that classic -- often reported as extinct -- middle-class American kid. Oh, and as his BU head coach David Quinn said, "He's a physical freak with strength, vision and an NHL shot." That helps, too. But, as we have seen many times in sports, those skills are not enough. No one does it alone. A lava lamp's function is not to http://www.authenticbruinsshop.com/authentic-34-carl-soderberg-jersey.html create light, but to create a mood. As your eyes fixate, the unpredictable, syrupy movements put you in a state of calmed focus. It's hard to take your eyes off it. Boston University marked its lava lamp with a firetruck-red No. 9. There's a new kid in town. I drove up to Boston last weekend to see and meet the kid in person. Jack Eichel is a 6-foot-1, 18-year-old buoyant blob of wax still cooling and congealing as he makes his purposeful strides toward the 2015 NHL draft in Sunrise, Florida. Eichel's name will be the first or second called next June 26. He will hold up an NHL jersey (Buffalo's? Carolina's? Winnipeg's? Arizona's? Florida's? Toronto's?), smile and begin his NHL career soon after. It's hard to picture him not playing in the NHL next season. A few NHL scouts today believe Eichel could step in and be a No. 1 center this season. Eichel is expected to go either first or second overall, depending on where Connor McDavid, who is playing for the Erie Otters of the Ontario Hockey League, goes. This has been predicted for a while now. This has NHL scouts and GMs salivating. And perhaps to dissuade teams from going the tanking route to improve their draft position, the league decreased the worst team's chances for the first pick from 25 percent to 20 percent. The team with the second-fewest points will have a 13.5 percent chance at the top pick, a reduction from 18.8 percent. Reduce all they want, the best chance to get the first-overall pick is to finish last. He accelerates with his head up carrying the puck and has the skill and attitude to beat players one-on-one. What makes players like Eichel so promising at the next level is that he also has a big-time release and a goal-scoring touch and also scores from bad angles like great players seem to do. He's a game-changer who makes players around him better. An area Eichel wants to improve on? "I want to work on bearing down on the net," Eichel said. "Bearing down and getting that goal that can help separate us on the scoreboard. " Jack Eichel's New England homecoming continues all year long at Boston University. Family, friends, the Beanpot, the Hockey East tournament and, hopefully, an NCAA tournament bid, and then he will have a framed BU jersey to hang on his wall for life. All signs point to him being a one-and-done and on to the NHL next season. Hockey equipment companies are primed to give him big bucks in endorsement deals. He will have little to prove by going back http://www.nhlofficial.com/wayne-gretzky-jersey-c-1_179_183.html to college. All that will be left is whether he goes No. 1 overall in the NHL draft. "Obviously, everybody wants to go No. 1," he said. "It's not the be-all and end-all, and it's not the end of the day if I don't. It's an exciting year for me and my family. I want to go No. 1 because I'm a real competitive guy, but there's a lot of players that have had successful NHL careers that didn't go No. 1."